Introduction
Hello everyone, welcome to the Mattacritic. This is Matthew Hemenway. I hope you are doing well. I am doing as well as I can. In this episode of the Mattacritic, I will be reviewing and analyzing The Signal: An Audible Original that you can listen off audible or Amazon. This story deals with a disgraced Astronomer who is teaching 11 grade high school science. She is good at it, and she loves doing it. She loves studying the stars and wants nothing more than to know how the universe ticks. Astronomy can be fascinating. I remember when I took astronomy when I was in high school. It was a great class to take. There are those that say space is empty and there is no sound in space. That is not true. There is sound in space, and you just must be on the lookout for it. Space has a sound that sounds like static. Static is a sound that humans are familiar with. It is in our electronics when we cannot get a signal. The disgraced astronomer will meet a man that she used to date, and he will get her to realize that she loves chasing after signals that come from space and want to discover their meaning. There is a cover up that happens, and both will meet another woman who has heard this signal. This story will challenge the listener in ways that he or she cannot imagine. What the listener thinks he or she knows ends up different than what he or she does. The story will push listeners to the limit. I will let you know my rating at the end of this episode. I hope this episode will inspire you to read, watch, and learn.
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Rest of Review and Rating of The Signal: An Audible Original
As was mentioned before, the Signal deals with a disgraced astronomer who is teaching 11th grade high school science. She loves teaching but does not mean that she would not like to get back out there again and explore the stars and figure out the meaning of the universe. The name of this woman is Veronica Chappel who used to work for the U.S. government. Vernoica Chappel is teaching her class; she gets a visit than none other from Malcolm Feldam who works for a newspaper called the Current. Malcome Feldman is a reporter that works for the Current. He is an old boyfriend of Veronica Chappel. He needs her help in understanding what the signal means. He believes that there is a cover up lying there and that they need to figure out what it means. Vernoica Chappel at first believes that it means nothing. She remembers being disgraced and does not want to risk going out there and having people think that she is crazy. It is understandable to why she would feel this way. Any person would feel this way, if it happened to either one of us. She changes her mind and lets her friend Malcom Feldman know that she will help him figure out what this all means.
This will lead both to going to San Francisco, CA and discovering that there is more than meets than eye to this. They will meet Ada Park who is a brilliant young scientist who is reluctant at first to help but she realizes that she cannot just stand by and do nothing. Ada Park will embark on this adventure with Veronica Chappel and Malcom Feldman. This will lead them going to Utah and they discover there is a cover up happening. What does this cover up mean? Is there something going on here or does it mean more. Who knows? They talk to Veronia Chappel’s old professor Frank who lets them know there is something going on here that interested parties do not want to get discovered. There was removal of data in the San Francisco, CA facility and a fire at the Utah facility as well as the removal of data. This tells the listener something is not right here or there is more than meets the eye here going on.
There is the U.S. Government and there is another group of people that are the interested parties. That group is Wells Industries, and it has several government contracts. They were letting the listener know that there is something significant happening. Wells Industries was saying the escalation of weapons that were happening in China was a concern. You have certain parties like India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and Russia. This is dangerous and it could turn out to be war.
Veronica Chappel is so convinced that it is aliens and that she would like to be proved right. Frank is reminding her of what happened the last time when you thought that. Before she was a high school science teacher; she worked for the U.S. government in the science division. She eventually was let go because of her belief in aliens.
Veronica Chappel will be so frustrated that she will go back to teaching high school science classes. She was feeling that Frank, Aida, and Malcolm were being too conservative in their approach. She felt they needed to go right at this and see what this will entail.
Veronica Chappel will meet Benjamin Wells after she was convinced by Malcolm and Aida to get back in this. She is still mad at them for not trusting her, but she decides to give it another try. Benjamin Wells will tell her about the signal and who created it. Benjamin Wells lets her know that it was him and he wanted her to be out there recording the other signal. He feels that if she does this, it will stop another major war from happening. Veronica Chappel will talk to Frank, Aida, and Malcolm about this. Aida thinks she should do it. Frank is not convinced by that. Malcolm is not sure what the right course of action is.
As not to be revealed, nothing more will be revealed here. It does bring the listener to the climax of this story.
I will give you, my rating. I give The Signal: An audible original, a 10 out of 10. It was a fun listen and had a lot to say about humanity and the idea of life beyond our planet. Even if it was a hoax, but it still allowed the listener to imagine if it were possible. Benjamin Wells wanted humanity to look upward and not think that it is alone in the universe. There is a bigger idea than just us. Humans will always believe that they are the only ones that matter and even those of us that should not be there. It is sad that humanity hates each other like it does. It would be great that we can learn to love each other instead of hating each other. The story does an excellent job of having the listener understand that space has a sound that it is static. For example, if you could not get transmission to a video, you will hear just static. The same happens when you listen to audio and the signal is bad, you will hear static. That is fascinating to say the least.
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The Signal: An Audible Original
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